Brian Earp
Brian David Earp is an American bioethicist, philosopher, and interdisciplinary researcher. He is probably best known for his writings on bodily autonomy and integrity, the involuntary non-therapeutic genital cutting of children and drug use in the United States. He is Director of the Oxford-National University of Singapore Centre for Neuroethics and Society and the EARP Lab within the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. Earp is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and of Psychology at NUS by courtesy. He is Associate Director of the Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics and Health Policy at Yale University and The Hastings Center. He is a Research Fellow at the Uehiro Oxford Institute. He is an elected member of the UK Young Academy under the auspices of the British Academy and the Royal Society.
Earp has written on a wide range of topics, including free will, sex and gender and the replication crisis in psychology. He has also worked on relational moral psychology, human enhancement, philosophy of love and children’s rights. Brian helped to establish "experimental philosophical bioethics" as an area of research. He previously wrote the quarterly "Philosophy in the Real World" column for The Philosopher. In 2019, Earp wrote his first book.
He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal for Medical Ethics alongside Professor Lucy Frith and Associate Professor Arianne Shahvisi and Editor-in-Chief of the inaugural open access companion journal to the JME, JME Practical Bioethics.
Personal life
Earp grew up in a conservative evangelical Christian household. His mother was a stay-at-home mother; his father was an X-ray technician.Work and views
Relationships and drugs
He is best known for writing Love Is the Drug: The Chemical Future of Our Relationships with Julian Savulescu. He has argued that certain forms of medications can be ethically consumed as a "helpful complement" in relationships. Both to fall in love, and, to fall out of it.Bodily autonomy and integrity, and children's rights
With other child genital cutting experts, Earp has argued that all forms of involuntary non-therapeutic genital cutting or surgery — including penile circumcision, intersex interventions, and female genital mutilation — are violations of bioethical principles. For this work, Earp was nominated for the 2020 John Maddox Prize, and received commendation from the judges, for “taking a multi-disciplined, science-based approach to a deep-rooted cultural practice”.A near ethical consensus in the Global North forbids clinicians to perform involuntary non-therapeutic genital cutting of endosex female minors, even pricking or nicking of the clitoral hood. For instance, these two are less severe than a endosex male circumcison: the partial or total removal of the penile prepuce of half of the motile skin system of the penis.
Some advocates of the permissibility of medicalized newborn penile circumcision who recognize the physical and symbolic overlaps between this custom and what they see as “minor” female genital cutting increasingly argue that the latter should be permitted in Western societies even for nonconsenting girls overlaps between this custom and what they see as “minor” female genital cutting increasingly argue that the latter should be permitted in Western societies even for nonconsenting girls . Nonvoluntary intersex surgeries have also in some cases been justified by appeals to the presumed acceptability of nonvoluntary penile circumcision.
With other child genital cutting experts, he asks that clinicians stop involuntary clitoral reduction surgeries on children with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, as well as the non-therapeutic genital cutting of endosex male minors and intersex children.
He's one of the authors of both statements made by the Brussels Collaboration on Bodily Integrity.